East Coast Storm: Millions With Water Problems; Hundreds of Thousands of Households Without Power

"Violent storms rip through region"
WTOP.com (July 26, 2010)

"Powerful, fast-moving storms swept through the region Sunday, leaving hundreds of thousands of families without electricity and leaving millions under mandatory water restrictions.

" 'This is going to be an event that we will be combating for the next couple of days,' Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley tells WTOP.

" 'We have no good estimate right now as to when all of this power will be back on.'

"O'Malley says four large power substations and 69 smaller ones were knocked offline.

" 'This is a multi-day effort,' said Pepco spokesman Clay Anderson.

"Anderson says the following areas may not have power until Tuesday: ..."

• Northwest D.C.
• Shepherd Park
• Silver Spring
• Bethesda
• Rockville
• Potomac
• Landover

The rest of the article has more, that's probably of greater interest to folks living in the south end of the megalopolis.¹

Sometimes the Lemming feels that news from America's high-profile cities gets hyped a bit much: like the annual brush fires on the north side of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

This, time, though, I don't have a problem with the level of coverage. The east coast has had seriously rough weather, a few folks are dead as a result, and a whole lot of survivors are learning what it's like to have a vulnerable infrastructure. Which is another topic.

In the news:

• "Power outages plague DC region after storm that killed 2 people"
  CNN (July 26, 2010)
• "Power Outages Plague DC Area After Storms; 2 Dead"
  The Associated Press, via National Public Radio (July 26, 2010)
• "Storms continue amid flood cleanup"
  Reuters (July 25, 2010)

---

¹ A megalopolis is "a very large urban complex (usually involving several cities and towns)." (Princeton's WordNet) There's one on the east coast of North America, running from around Boston to Washington, D.C.

I'm quite interested in places like that: partly because they seem to be the inspiration for thoughtful (?) motion pictures like Judge Dredd and Blade Runner.

I also enjoy looking at history, 20th-century agricultural technology, and the statistics of places like that: and doing a little serious analysis. What I come up with doesn't look much like the Judge Dredd sets. I've written about my views of what cities could be like, in another blog, particularly these posts:

• "Daniel Boone and the Megalopolis"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (March 5, 2010)
• "Getting Details Right: The Vast, Huge, and Very Large City Of The Future"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (June 25, 2009)